Closing Speech

Dr JOHN KAYE [3.02 p.m.], in reply: I thank members for their contributions, which were many and varied. I particularly thank my Greens colleagues for their detailed research and support of this measure. I also thank Ms Helen Westwood for uniquely having the good grace to allow that our motives in bringing forward this legislation might have indeed been good.

The stark reality of the warnings issued by the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that there is no room left to pretend that we are not staring down the barrel of a crisis of unprecedented proportions in human history. Professor Garnaut's interim report, like that of Dr Stern before him, left no doubt that delaying action on reducing emissions is a recipe for disaster. Garnaut is showing that sound economic policy recognises that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. We continue with business as usual at our peril. In greenhouse policy risk management comes a moral imperative. As geophysicist Geoff Davies put it:

"The level of risk to which humanity is now exposed would be totally unacceptable in other contexts, like aeroplanes or bridge design."

Climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our times. The potential consequences for human and non-human life pale compared with those posed by terrorism or even rogue nations armed with nuclear weapons. Without ecological security there can be no human security. In many senses climate change is a massive transfer of wealth, a rip-off of low-income nations, of climate-vulnerable communities and of future generations by those who profit by continuing to dump greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Economists call it externalities; the Greens call it theft. Those who would deny, underestimate or obfuscate the potential impact and those who would distract from the task of decarbonisation with snake oil non-solutions or feeble excuses will be judged very harshly by history. Yet, apart from the speeches of my three Greens colleagues, responses to this bill did exactly that.

The massive political and economic power of the coal corporations and those who would purchase this State's electricity industry was writ large in this debate. Make no mistake: there is big money in coal and big money in buying and running the coal-fired power stations, but only if someone else bears the cost of the damage that it does. And where there is money there is power. It is only because of that power that this State is even contemplating an environmentally disastrous and socially irresponsible privatisation of the electricity industry.

Arguments presented against this bill are that this State should stay the course on expanding the coal industry and building new coal-fired power stations. That is exactly what the corporate world would want. It is not what our children and the children of people in the corporate world would want. Three broad categories of arguments were put against this bill: the first suggested that we should disregard the warnings of climate science; the second suggested that we should put our faith in the promise of clean coal technologies, and the third involved a series of lame excuses for inaction. First came those who questioned the severity, causes or—in extreme cases in this Chamber—even the existence of human-induced climate change.

It is extraordinary that a bunch of politicians would set their own abilities to understand the complex dynamics of climate, biosphere, oceans and atmosphere above the ability of the scientific community. This Parliament is being inexorably left behind by a population that is more open-minded, more committed to rationality and less compromised by its relationship to the big polluters and, in particular, the biggest of them all, the coal industry and the coal-fired power stations. Reverend Fred Nile relied on Archbishop Pell's well-known climate change scepticism. I ask him to read these words from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in 2004:
We now urge Catholics as an essential part of their faith commitment to respond with sound judgements and resolute action to the reality of climate change Given the gravity of the problem, detailed and resolute responses need to be both swift and radical.

I also urge Reverend Fred Nile to listen to his comrade in the Christian Democratic Party, Gordon Moyes, whose intelligent and thoughtful blog of 26 November 2007, entitled "Learning from [the Christian Democratic Party's] Federal Election failure"—

Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes: What kind of blog was that?

Dr JOHN KAYE: I said that it was an intelligent and thoughtful blog. It stated:

"We have disregarded the facts about climate change that worry so many people with our head-in-the-sand-denial approach."

A variant on the theme came from the Opposition Deputy Whip, Rick Colless. In order to minimise the role that coal plays in this State's greenhouse gas emissions he suggested that a single regrettable bushfire at Goonoo community conservation area near Dubbo produced more carbon dioxide than the Sartor-approved coalmine at Anvil Hill—at least in one year. He of course ignored the fact that Anvil Hill will have a life of at least 10 years. Mr Colless based his calculations on a figure of 629 tonnes of carbon dioxide per burnt hectare of native forest. It is not clear to us where those figures came from but a recent Australian Capital Territory State of the Environment report—along with figures from every government department we could find—estimates gross emissions at about 52 tonnes per hectare in the short term. That is one-twelfth of the amount Mr Colless suggested.

One wonders how Mr Colless managed to make a mistake of a factor of 12. The real figure is just 8 per cent of Mr Colless' claimed level of emissions from that fire. But even using the 52 tonnes per hectare figure may be overstating the impacts. In fact, governments around Australia, as well as the Australian Capital Territory report, count wildfires in native forests as having zero carbon emissions.

The Hon. Rick Colless: You wouldn't know what you are talking about. Zero carbon emissions—what nonsense!

Dr JOHN KAYE: I may not know what I am talking about but I imagine that the Australian Capital Territory Government would know more than you. Governments around Australia claim regrowth soaks up carbon dioxide provided the original land use is not changed after the fire. Mr Colless needs to read documents written by his friends in the forestry industry before they get very cranky with him for dobbing them in for their practices of burning native forests. The second set of arguments centres on so-called clean coal, in particular, carbon capture and storage, the convenient excuse of the coal corporations to continue poisoning the planet.

The people of New South Wales are being asked to permit massive expansion in the mining and burning of coal in this State on the promise that a new, as yet unproven technology will offer cost-effective low carbon energy at some time in the future. The Government and the Opposition are asking us to put our faith in a technology that has not yet been demonstrated to work, while there are good reasons to believe there are irresolvable technological barriers to the cost-effective functioning of carbon capture and storage.

The world's largest carbon capture and storage demonstration project, FutureGen in Illinois, has just fallen over after the Bush administration pulled the plug on funding for the project because of persistent and massive cost overruns. In essence we are being asked to play technological Russian roulette. Proponents say, "If it works, all will be well." But reliance on future technologies is inherently risky. If carbon capture and storage turns out not to be viable we will have been gambling on the myth of clean coal. We will have driven this State and this planet into an environmental, economic and social brick wall, with catastrophic consequences.

Even if commercially workable carbon capture and storage technology can be found, and is cost effective, and appropriate burial sites can be found in New South Wales, it will be at least 15 years before it can be deployed. That will mean a decade and a half of ongoing growth in accumulated emissions. As last year's Massachusetts Institute of Technology report on the future of coal identified, retrofitting existing coal-fired power stations and building carbon capture and storage ready power stations will be even more technologically challenging.

The Greens likened it to building a runway for alien spacecraft before we know what those spacecraft look like. We do not know whether they will land vertically or horizontally, or indeed whether they even exist. The idea advanced by some apologists for the coal industry, including Professor Owen, that the cost of as yet untested technological systems can be meaningfully estimated is fanciful. It is policy bankruptcy of the worst kind to justify existing pollution activities in the hope of a cost-effective technology fix at some time in the future.

The final set of arguments brought against the bill involved excuses for inaction, along the lines of, "If we don't do it, someone else will", "We are a small component of global emissions and it doesn't matter", and "It is just too hard, so we ought not try." The first of these is morally infantile and logically bankrupt, and could be used to justify any form of abhorrent behaviour. The suggestion that because New South Wales coal is cleaner, safer to mine, or nicer looking than others ignores the 637 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that the combustion of Australian exported coal pumped into the atmosphere in 2006-07 or the 58 million tonnes emitted from coal-fired power stations in this State alone in 2005.

It is not that our coal substitutes for that of other States and nations. The climate imperative is that the total amount of coal being burned is stabilised and reduced in an orderly and planned fashion. Professor Garnaut makes the point that, although Australia produces a relatively small fraction of total global greenhouse gas emissions, this nation has one of the highest per capita contributions. No morally sound argument would allow Australians the right to emit more greenhouse gases per capita than people in other nations. To attempt to justify this position would be to bestow on Australians special rights by virtue of their good luck in being on this continent. That position is unfair and unreasonable, and at the very least would attract massive global condemnation of this State and country.

Further, Professor Garnaut observes that Australia has a strong interest in the world adopting effective mitigation because of our sensitivity to the impacts of climate change. The Greens accept that putting the brakes on the growth of the coal industry and starting work on a new post-carbon energy industry will not be easy. We accept that it will cause disruption to some jobs and to some communities. That is why the bill explicitly provides for transition funds to help individual workers, households, communities and small businesses to make that transition—just as Professor Garnaut indicated in his interim report.

The bill is about creating a jobs-rich energy efficiency, low carbon technology future. It is about making sure this State is a world-leading developer and manufacturer of those technologies and not just an importer of them. But the longer we delay starting work on that transition the less likely it is that we will do it successfully, the less likely it is that we can profit from it, and the less likely it is that we can ensure that sustainable, high-quality jobs are created in New South Wales. The only way to protect jobs is to ensure that we make deliberate decisions about the energy future of this State that steer it into employment activities that are not constrained by the climate. Coalmine expansions are a dangerous distraction from that task.

The Greens were intrigued and a little flattered that someone paid for and gave The Nationals access to a report on our Climate Futures Bill prepared by ACIL Tasman. We are can only speculate as to who paid for that report, because neither National party member who referred to it identified the organisation or individual who paid for it. Unfortunately, the generosity and commitment to quality public debate of the anonymous donor did not extend to providing us or the people of this State with a copy of the report, despite our repeated requests to both the Hon. Rick Colless and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to do so.

Without people having access to the modelling assumptions within the report, the results quoted by The Nationals are meaningless. Just as in law, where an accused has the right to challenge the evidence of the accusers, in science and public policy, subjecting findings to the rigour of public and peer scrutiny is an essential ingredient of credibility. Because it is possible to manufacture assumptions that produce any desired outcome, the ACIL Tasman findings cannot be considered and weighed against competing evidence. The cowardice of those who seek to use it to attack our bill without giving us access to the report undermines the core of their argument.

Rather than heading down the right path to a sustainable energy policy, the Government is perversely trying to ram through a privatisation scheme that will serve only to empower the greenhouse mafia further and drive up energy sector carbon dioxide emissions. It is absolutely outrageous that this State is contemplating handing over 35 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions to the private sector, which, not through an act of immorality but through an act of its very essence, will seek to sell more to make greater profits. Privatisation of the electricity industry would add to the problems of an expanding coal industry and would add to the difficulties of containing the emissions that come from our coal-fired power stations.

It is unlikely that this House will see fit to pass the bill. However, in 20 years time this Parliament may look back on the failure to implement the provisions of the Climate Futures Bill 2008 as an opportunity lost. Surely, these provisions will one day be implemented. The question is: At that time will this State be looking back on a proud achievement of having taken bold initiatives to grasp the future and protect jobs or will we be looking back at opportunities squandered by the political power of the coal industry?

Instead of a program of planned and orderly decarbonisation, as foreshadowed by the bill, just transitions for industry workers, and the fostering of a jobs-rich clean energy industry, will this Parliament have had to take more dramatic and disruptive action, at much greater cost to communities and the economy? It is time this House took responsibility for the environmental consequences of its decisions. Our grandchildren deserve better than the self-justifying, irresponsible and morally bankrupt posturing that has plagued the negative responses to this bill. I commend the bill to the House.